CMD: Atul H Mehta PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Networking, Accessories, Peripherals, Multimedia AGENCY OPERATIONS: APC, Addtron, BTC, Creative, Syquest, Odyssey, Western Digital   START-UP YEAR: 1987 EMPLOYEES: 110 DEALER OUTLETS: 240 ADDRESS: 3, Dhuru Building, 329 Vithalbhai Patel Road, Mumbai 400004 TEL: 3873436, 3851573 FAX: 3877836 PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS l The company grew by 100 percent in the last fiscal year. l The peripherals and multimedia products contributed to about 90 percent of its turnover.

Despite the sluggish markets, Compuage, which focuses on distribu-tion of products to resellers and systems integrators, posted a high turnover growth for the second successive year. It grew from Rs 43.83 crore in 1996-97 to Rs 88.89 crore, during the last fiscal year-a growth of over 100 percent. The group turnover stood at Rs 95.06 crore with its group company, Addonix Computers adding Rs 6.19 crore to its kitty.

Compuage's 1997-98 performance is a classic example of three basic things that a successful company should keep in mind in a business like distribution. First, proactive diagnosis of market trends and identifying customers. Second, based on that diagnosis, identify the areas for expansion-physical as well as operational. And, third, to ensure a proper inventory management thus promising the channels full-time availability of its entire product range.

That's what Compuage did last year. Toward the end of 1996-97, it realized that the Home segment and SMEs are going to be the pillars of growth in the coming year. So the company introduced three basic lines of products to address this highly exploding segment. It tied up with Addtron for low and medium range networking products, BTC for peripherals to strengthen its existing product portfolio, and Creative for its multimedia products. This, according to the company, paid rich dividends, as these product lines contributed significantly toward increase in sales revenue in the financial year, 1997-98.

The peripherals and the multimedia products contributed about 90 percent to the company's turnover, while the remaining 10 percent came from networking products and UPSs. To reach out to the SMEs and SOHO segment, and to make its presence national, the company opened up offices in major cities like Chennai, Secunderabad, Ahmedabad, and Calcutta. About 90 percent of its turnover came from Western and Southern regions.

Compuage has distribution tie-ups with APC for UPSs, Addtron for networking, BTC for peripherals, Creative for multimedia, Syquest for storage devices, Odyssey for peripherals, Genius for mouse, scanners, and digitizers, and Western Digital for hard disk drives.

The company, in the current fiscal, plans to expand its operations so as to offer its products locally. With the kind of growth it has registered over the last few years, the company aims to be the premier distribution house in India.